By C.S. Thompson

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Suppose you are on the perfect date with the ideal partner. The person across from you is attractive and interesting; their conversation fascinates you and their beauty moves you. The dinner is satisfying and the flavors complex. The wine is wonderful- not only is its taste compelling, but it induces a warm glow, the kind of almost ethereal drunkenness that makes you more of an angel than an animal. The date ends exactly as you might have hoped, with incredible sex that you’ll remember forever. By the time you fall asleep you’re falling in love, and every aspect of the world seems transformed by the feeling- as if the everyday world had always been amazingly beautiful and you were somehow too asleep to see it before.

You had an incredible experience and you were able to savor it, not only enjoying it, but appreciating it on every level- aesthetic, spiritual, physical and emotional. Except the aftermath is not as ideal.

When you wake up in the morning, your partner is gone, without so much as a goodbye or any sign of shared emotion. Somehow you misunderstood their heart- they didn’t feel the same. Or, for whatever reason, they have chosen not to pursue it. The wine you drank the night before has left you with a hangover, and now with a dry tongue and an aching head you look out on a world in which you are still alone, a world that has no more magic in it than it did the day before. On top of that, you find that you spent too much on dinner and drinks, and the rest of the money in your wallet will barely be enough to feed you on plain rice for the rest of the week.

But you are unfazed despite this sudden reversal. It would only be natural to feel pain and disappointment, to experience the loneliness of the world a little more keenly, but while you are visited by these feelings, they don’t overwhelm you. Knowing that the decisions of other people cannot be controlled, you don’t begrudge what you cannot have, and hold no resentment or bitterness at how temporary your experience proved. You dismiss your hangover as a natural consequence, the logical end-result of drinking too much wine, and you accept the necessity of eating plain food as the price of the fine dinner you just enjoyed. And so you simply get up and go about your day, enriched and yet undamaged by both your gain and your loss, able to savor what happened but not possessed by it, free from unhealthy yearning but still profoundly touched by your brush with magic.

If only we could all develop such a flexible spirit- able to dive into the world of our passions, but regretting nothing and being owned by nothing- truly free but also truly alive. If we could combine that with an unshakable commitment to honorable behavior, rating our own integrity above any pleasure, then we would have created something really powerful. Focused on service to something greater than the self, such a spirit could do great things.

There have been many philosophies in the history of the world. Generally speaking, each one addresses some lack, some weakness in our life and character- and each one is the proper medicine for a particular problem. Each one on its own, however, is only a viewpoint, a partial view with the imbalance of partiality. The complete person, the fully human person, is a balance of forces- an Appolonian and a Dionysian, an Epicurean and a Stoic, a philosopher and a mystic- and able to use all of their advantages at the same time.

Such a person displays a cool and stoic self-control in the face of disaster, but a drunken abandonment to the joy of life when it is time to celebrate. He manifests the high pride of the pagan heroes when it is time to fight, and the gentle self-effacement of the Christian saints when it is time to love. Or more accurately, such a person displays all these qualities simultaneously, with each quality either manifesting on the outside or becoming internal, depending on where it is needed at that moment- the exoteric and the esoteric in opposition and unity.

In the sort of character that I am describing, there is a balance or even a neutralizing principle between the inner life and the outer life. Such a person is a stoic on the outside and a mystic on the inside, self-willed and self-controlled in all his relations with the external world, but drunk with glory in the privacy of his spirit, as if he was always on his knees in spontaneous awe. On the outside she manifests a spirit of conquest, not of other people but of all obstacles, while on the inside she understands surrender. She cultivates a spirit that is heroic, high and noble, capable of great sacrifices and great deeds, while in her own mind she lives in a state of unconditional service and acceptance of whatever must be.

Conversely, when he is overwhelmed by beauty and drops to his knees, he maintains a quiet place of calm inside. When he is compelled to surrender by a superior force, he maintains at the same moment an unconquered spirit.

When it is necessary to be stern on the outside, he is gentle in his heart. When it is necessary to tread softly on the outside, she remains unmovable within the mind.

There could be a thousand examples of this kind of thinking, but the ideal in each case is a balance of forces, a harmonious whole in which all of our faculties have a part- and to which every philosophy can contribute something.

There may or may not be true happiness in the life we live here. The great minds of the world have addressed the question for millennia, and the balance of them seem broadly agreed that this is a world of suffering. Something is missing from the moment we’re born; we’re looking for something. A baby thinks that being held by his mother will satisfy him, so he cries until she picks him up- only to start crying again ten minutes later. A grown man believes that a few beers and the chance of casual sex will answer the vague dissatisfaction in his spirit, so he goes out to a nightclub- only to find that when the beer has been drunk and the sex is over he feels exactly the same. Those who have no one to be in love with are often miserable- and those who are in love are often miserable too. These things can’t answer the question; these things can’t satisfy. And perhaps there is no satisfaction to be had:

No matter what we create it won’t last forever. The so-called immortality of great art is just a slightly longer moment in a vast span of time, which will disappear as if it never existed just as we do. But beauty is its own end; it requires no prop. No one asks the Cathedral of Chartres if it ought to have been built; its magnificence is its justification. We shouldn’t cultivate the spirit merely in order to chase the chimera of happiness, and we shouldn’t be so naive as to think that we can be free of pain. We should cultivate our spirits for no other reason than to make them beautiful, to create in our own selves the harmonious balance of which we’re capable. This beauty includes every aspect of a life well-lived- from struggle and ambition to love and service, treating others with respect and equality while not being afraid to fight for what’s right, accepting the hard facts of a hard world while retaining the capacity for joy and ecstatic awe. If we find happiness along the way, then so be it, and if we find suffering instead then so be it. Either way, we’ll become something more than we were, whatever our talents or lack of them. We’ll be able to say we actually lived. In a world where so many people only pass the time, marking the minutes in Thoreau’s "quiet desperation" until it is time to die, that is reason enough.

If I were asked to present the most basic possible version of what I mean by the balance of forces, I would say that it was to be a stoic on the outside and a mystic on the inside- though it can also be the reverse. No tragedy and no defeat can shake the internal stability of a disciplined and stoic mind.

The Stoics taught a calm acceptance of the will of fate, a spirit of joy toward whatever must be.

Some critics have interpreted this as a defeatist philosophy, a slavish acceptance of things the way they are by those who simply have no power to make anything different. But Stoicism was a philosophy of emperors as well as slaves, and was particularly popular with soldiers. The spirit that accepts the will of fate is armored for battle.

But if it’s true it changes nothing.

Beginning with the Stoic and martial principle that we must calmly accept the inevitability of death, we can see that most people behave as if they were totally unaware of this fact.

Forgetting that you’re going to die is the source of many types of false thinking. For instance, the idea that any sort of daily trouble has any fundamental importance, or the equally flawed idea that nothing matters. From the perspective of knowing that nothing lasts and you can’t hold on to anything, why would you ever worry about anything for even a moment? But also, when you think about the fact that you’re going to die, why would you waste even a little bit of time? It’s as if everything matters and yet nothing matters. You can adopt either perspective as needed. For instance, if you’re getting caught up in worry about anything, you can remind yourself that you’re not going to be here forever and your little troubles, no matter how all-encompassing, are not very significant on the universal scale. And if you become stuck, you can remind yourself that you’re going to die, at any moment, and that you have no time to waste in any sort of self-indulgence. If you want to accomplish anything that you can be proud of, you must accomplish it now.

The ancient Stoics viewed all emotions as pathe, mental illusions created by false judgements about reality- and indeed, many emotions have this character. But to adopt such an extreme position would be inconsistent with the goal of cultivating a balance of forces, an ability to savor our passions while remaining unruled by them. The emotions, however, are both powerful and primitive, affecting our judgements at a much deeper level than reason. Therefore, the first step must be to establish some control over them, some ability to step back from the flame and view it calmly.

To do this, you must develop a clear picture in your own mind of the person you want to be and then pursue that independently of other people’s actions or your emotional reactions. Be responsible for your own emotional states and refuse to let anyone else claim responsibility for them or to hold anyone else responsible for them. When making decisions, don’t act or react based on emotional whims. Instead, take a step back and from the most objective viewpoint possible make your decision based on the type of person you want to be and a compassionate understanding of what the other players in the situation are doing. Emotion can inform your decision but cannot be allowed to control it. This does not mean that you shouldn’t love other people, only that the integrity of your actions is separate from the integrity of their actions. Viewed in this light, no one can mistreat you. They can only behave with integrity or without it, but they cannot mistreat you because they never had that power over you. Integrity is the guiding principle here. People will try to assign importance to other factors, but these other factors have no importance. There’s no excuse for not doing the right thing, but you must apply this principle sternly to yourself and gently to others.

Never allow yourself to be impatient or upset. When you start to feel either way, pull back to an objective viewpoint and analyze the situation with compassion. (For example, the clerk is having a bad day and you aren’t really in a hurry. Especially if you are in a hurry. You’re going to die before long anyway.)

Pay attention to what the other people around you are doing and why they’re doing it. Don’t project your own hopes or fears onto this analysis, but try to see their actions as they would see them. If you get a clear picture of what they’re doing, view it with the compassion that comes from understanding what drives them, but don’t be controlled by anyone else’s agenda. Don’t let your understanding of anything be clouded by hopes or fears. Constantly examine your understanding for signs of any such confusion. Never be attached to results. You are independent of them. In any situation, you will live the way you have chosen to live, and whatever the results are you will not lose your way. The method and practice is what matters; results are irrelevant. For example, if you are in a romantic relationship you should not attach importance to a fantasy about the end result. "Will we be together forever" is an illusion. Similarly, "Will she leave me" is an illusion. Plan for the future as appropriate, but don’t attach emotional energy to mental fantasies about the future. In this way, while you can be hurt you cannot be harmed.

Your position is neutral, objective and rigorously honest. Illusions of any kind are the enemy, and any kind of rationalization or dishonesty must be confronted and defeated. Any type of hope or fear is an illusion. As Boethius said while awaiting execution:

The ideal position is one in which you are overwhelmed by the beauty of everything, you are drunk with the world, but you want nothing.

Of course you will always have goals in any situation, but you shouldn’t have a set course of action with only one acceptable outcome. Once you can assess how every possible outcome can be appropriately dealt with, you won’t be excessively attached to any one outcome and in that sense you will have no agenda. This is a liberating position from which to act.

You must never wager more than you’re willing to lose. If necessary, wager everything, but understand the implications of this- you have to be willing to lose it. If you aren’t willing to lose what you’ve wagered, you can’t be free.

In your interactions with others, it is important to understand that every relationship is a type of contract, and that these contracts are being negotiated as they develop. What people call love is a commitment to a certain type of behavior, not merely an intense emotional state although the two generally go together. In any interaction, ask yourself "What is our contract at this point?" and "What do I need to do to live up to my end of the contract?" Never impose or project your fantasies onto your expectations of the other person. It’s better to examine their actions only to help you determine what you actually owe them and what you don’t, but to avoid any condemnation of them if they fail to meet your expectations- be forgiving of their weaknesses, because as a free person you can afford to be. If they are genuinely failing to live up to their commitments to you, raise the issue respectfully, politely and quietly, with consideration for their dignity. If they fail to address the problem, you can scale back the level of your commitment to them or you can end the relationship.

"In Love" and "love" are not at all the same thing and are frequently almost opposite to each other. Therefore, "In Love" is a destructive illusion unless it’s approached in fundamentally the same way as any other type of love. It doesn’t matter how intense the emotion is- you still have to check every action against your obligations, examine it for integrity and illusions, and act deliberately rather than impulsively. In this way you can turn everything around- your entire future life might hang in the balance, but that is treated as being of no importance. The only thing that matters is the question "Am I behaving in a loving way?" If a situation is intolerable to you, you will simply not participate. Again, it doesn’t matter how strong the emotion may be. It can be so strong as to kill you, but it cannot control you. Only your actions are truly important. However, even if you are acting so as to scale down a relationship, remove yourself from it, or raise issues within it, all these things must still be done in a loving and respectful way. So there are two sides to this approach, and they apply equally to anyone you love whether this person is your sibling, parent, friend, wife or girlfriend. On the one hand you base your actions toward the other person on obligation, respect, humility and devotion, to whatever degree you have actually worked out in your contract with them. On the other hand, your actions are not controlled by your emotions; instead they are deliberate acts based on principle, and you will never allow yourself to be controlled. In fact, it is not possible for anyone to control you. There is no need to be afraid of anything if you adopt this approach.

There are two sides to almost everything in this method. On the one hand, independence is stressed and is a guiding principle of behavior, but on the other hand obligation to others is essential and is also a principle of behavior. The key to understanding this is that your behavior in any interaction is based on obligation, and this is possible because you are independent of the emotional forces that control most people. You are a free person, so you are free to fulfill your obligations with a joyful spirit. Most people do the wrong thing because their emotional whims have them in bondage and so they treat other people carelessly. But the fact is that we are all inescapably tied to each other, inescapably dependent on each other, so this carelessness is destructive. You are cultivating the ability to step outside of any situation with part of your mind, so that you assess your role in it and behave as you would like to behave even if it nearly kills you. That’s what is meant by independence. Do not slip into selfish and subjective behavior.

When you are established in a position of independence, so that there can be no question of anyone controlling you, you should enter into your interactions with others in a spirit of service. Your attitude toward them should be one of humility from a position of strength. As a general rule, those who are naturally humble must be compelled to heroism, and those who are naturally strong must be compelled to humility- a struggle which, in the latter case, is the struggle between good and evil.

Nevertheless, the world we live in is a world of war, and there are occasions in any life for conflicts of various kinds. When you fight (whether literally or figuratively) it should always be a decision that serves your overall goals, not a rash action dictated by an emotional whim. Therefore, no matter what type of conflict, it should be entered into deliberately from the objective viewpoint.

Disrespect is a declaration of war, so you should never indulge in hard words in place of hard deeds. Yelling and shouting show a lack of control, expose your private problems to outsiders, expose your inner self to harm, and show disrespect to the person being yelled at, as if you could bludgeon them into agreement by being loud enough. When people hear someone yell, they laugh at that person and feel embarrassed for them. Approach all your interactions with humility and dignity. No matter how angry you are, yelling is unacceptable. There are only a few exceptions. One is to warn someone of danger, and the other is when you’re in conflict with an enemy. Yelling can, in certain circumstances, break an enemy’s spirit. Therefore, yelling should be understood as a type of violence, and you should never yell at someone except in that context. Yelling in that context is deliberate, and is not a result of anger.

You should also never fight on your own behalf no matter what the justification. As a person who is uncontrolled by emotional forces, you can bear whatever you have to bear in terms of daily indignities. You should fight only to protect someone, correct an injustice or fulfill an obligation, or to prevent or resist genuine evil. If you want to fight, you probably don’t have a valid reason to do so.

The tendency in any type of conflict is to use too much force, whether literally or figuratively. Using too much force would be a sign that you were controlled by emotional forces. Determine what level of force is just barely appropriate and use it. This will be much more effective. In terms of physical conflict, this means that you must use as little violence as you can get away with while fulfilling your obligations. In terms of personal interactions, it means that when you feel irritated and think you need to say something, you generally don’t. If you keep your peace the situation will resolve itself. If you do need to say something, say as little as possible. The results will be far more satisfying than if you had fully expressed your frustrations. Note that the minimum level of force is that which actually resolves the situation; being victimized is not necessary. When you have determined what you actually need to accomplish, then quietly refuse to be moved from that.

One of the most dangerous spiritual problems we face is boredom, the listless apathy of a mind jaded by stimulation but demanding more of it. Many people spend entire days wasting their time, engaging in meaningless diversions that don’t even truly entertain them in the first place, searching for a satisfaction they can never have but they feel entitled to. When new prisoners come into prison, the guards like to tell them "You got nothing coming." This is the condition in which we enter the world. Nothing is owed to us, and therefore we are not entitled to have any particular type of experience. Therefore it is not really possible to waste your time, because it’s not possible for any time to belong to you. You’re still alive no matter what you’re doing, and you’re still going to die. Time can only be wasted in the sense that you are dead to it. Be alive and awake.

What sufferers from boredom rarely realize is that you don’t need to have "something to do". People cut themselves off from the world by requiring diversion from it. Dead to the world, how could they be anything but bored by it? You don’t need to be entertained, and you don’t need to have anything to do. If there is work to do then do it, and if there is something you want to do then do that. But there is no need for you to do anything, as long as you are awake. Requiring diversion is what puts you to sleep.

Disappointment comes from having a sense of entitlement and from unrealistic expectations. If you pay better attention, a dry fruit will taste sweet even though you may know that a fresh fruit would have been better. Comparing the dry fruit you’re actually eating to an imaginary piece of fresh fruit is an illusion. So if you happen to get a dry piece of fruit, pay better attention to its flavor and you’ll enjoy it. As we are entitled to nothing, disappointment is always an illusion. If you can learn to pay attention in this way, then you will never be bored. The irony is that once you develop this spirit, you will almost always be driven by an internal flame, a boundless joy in doing worthwhile things that will leave you little time to even consider so-called "needs" such as entertainment.

However, no matter how stable and self-controlled you become, there will be times of darkness. We cannot escape the pain of the world, and to even try to do so is misguided. Despite the attempts of materialists to reduce all spiritual problems to imbalances of brain chemistry, life and its riddles prove more elusive. While medication can restore some balance to a desperate person, buying them some breathing space with which to confront their issues, no pill can ever answer the big questions. Depressed people on medication are simply medicated, not cured. Unless they wrestle directly with the source of their suffering, confronting the spiritual questions they have left unanswered, they stand little chance of breaking free. Our mental states reshape our brain chemistry as much as they are shaped by it- or perhaps another way of saying it is that they are exactly the same thing, our thoughts indistinguishable from the means that our brain uses to communicate with itself. In either case, describing all emotions as simply products of brain chemistry is surely an error.

Seneca once said, "What use is there in crying over a piece of life? The whole thing is worth shedding tears over." Depression is not an unreasonable reaction to the reality of the world we live in. It is, however, an insufficient one. Despair provides one of the most profound opportunities this life can offer us, provided it doesn’t paralyze and destroy us as it so often does. The dark night of the soul may feel like a desert, and like a desert it is dangerous to attempt to cross. But deserts aren’t actually empty places- they are filled with life. And the dark night is fertile too, in its own way.

The mind enters a state of despair because of an unresolved conflict, a riddle whose resolution contains an epiphany. On the other side of this flat bleakness is the next stage, a resolution of one problem that clears the way for greater conquests. Melancholy ought to be taken lightly at first, neither coddled nor resisted but just quietly noted. In all likelihood it will pass on its own. When it doesn’t, there are weightier issues, issues whose resolution may entail a paradox, the central lack of understanding that inhibits your further growth. Cutting this Gordian knot will involve a lot of suffering, sometimes prolonged suffering- but if you can answer the riddle, then your powers will increase. The simple feeling that they are increasing can produce an overwhelming sense of joy.

The tendency of most religions is to look on despair as a disease, a state of moral sickness caused by attachment to the world’s illusions.

Then lose the world.

There is much truth in recognizing our yearnings as illusory, but to dismiss all emotions as pathe seems to sidestep the problem, disengaging from the source of our suffering instead of integrating it into an effective unity. Even the deepest sorrows can bring us closer to things divine.

There is something to be said, also, for the loyalty of grief- not an unbalanced and rebellious denial, but a gift of honor. In the balance of forces, the internal always balances the nature of the external. So this is where we truly part company with Stoicism. While my goal is always to cultivate a free and stoic spirit, a spirit that remains uncontrolled by emotional forces, I do not seek to destroy or deny my emotions. I advocate an approach that applies stoicism to the external world and mysticism to the internal. And the essence of mysticism is an ecstatic surrender.

Despite your controlled and objective stance, don’t protect yourself from the world. Surrender completely, and always fall back on non-resistance. Beneath the surface, your attitude should be like someone throwing himself off a cliff. In this way you can experience all the wonders and horrors of the world without losing your equilibrium. On the one hand, life is war and you’re always at war; on the other hand you have no enemies and you resist nothing. The other rules are most applicable to the external world, but this rule is most applicable to the internal world. If everything is collapsing, throw away the other rules and surrender to God to the extent that it feels like throwing yourself into a fire to be burned up. If you survive, the world will be reborn for you. In some ways, the other rules are just tactics and this is the only rule that matters. Hell is the state of conflict. Serve the beauty of the world with no thought for yourself at all and you’ll never need to use the other rules.

This spirit of surrender is the essence of marriage, whether with God or in the traditional sense. Marriage, in this inner meaning, is an absolute commitment- no longer a contract at all but a mystical union. This type of higher marriage is a very rare thing.

There is a Chinese saying that, "The easy path will prove difficult, and the difficult path will prove easy." On the one hand, this method is harsh and would seem to require a great deal of strength. This is why surrender is necessary. If you renounce strength and don’t try to protect yourself at all, a tremendous sense of power appears spontaneously and everything feels effortless. Frequently it will feel as if you’re struggling, but that’s when you’re holding on to strength and stubbornness- following these principles on the surface, but forgetting the deeper aspects. The tactical aspects of this approach are the surface, and surrender is the mystery. Therefore, despite the fact that your stoic discipline has developed a strong spirit that cannot be controlled or moved, it is folly to live your life by stubbornness. The way to ultimate victory is to understand the real meaning of "surrender; don’t be strong." When you understand this paradox, you will know true victory. You will live a life characterized by sincerity, openness, clarity and simplicity- a life that doesn’t need to be explained or justified.

The whole basis of my thinking is mythopoetic. Myth and poetry, in my view, represent a more profound level of truth than reason, and one to which our reason has no access. In the Eleusinian Mysteries there were two types of secret- those things which initiates were simply forbidden to repeat (such as the details of the ritual) and those things which could not be expressed in words in the first place, the things that actually transformed the initiates into men reborn. It is those greater mysteries we touch in myth. Santayana once said that, "There are two stages in the criticism of myths... The first treats them angrily as superstitions; the second treats them smilingly as poetry." This statement implies that poetry is somehow to be pitied, rather than one of our most fundamental behaviors as human beings- a surprising lapse in such a great poet as Santayana. Instead of "smilingly" he should have said "with reverence."

I would say rather that there are two fallacies in the treatment of myth. The fundamentalist (of whatever religion) treats myth literally, thus confusing truth with facts and devaluing both. The materialist simply thinks of myth as superstitions and lies. Both views miss the point entirely: the gods are mysteries. They can’t be pinned down as something that does exist or doesn’t exist, facts or lies or archetypes or even spirits. All of those options devalue them to such an extent as to seem almost sacrilegious to me. The gods are mysteries, "forever present between somewhere and nowhere," in the words of the great T’ang Dynasty poet Li Ho. We meet with them in some incomprehensible place of our own creation in the depths of our minds, the internal temple in which we honor the kinds of truth for which there are no words. We create poems and images to evoke that place, but not to explain it. It can never be explained or quantified. It simply is what it is. This knowledge of ultimate things through direct intuition, the experience of truth beyond reason, is known as gnosis.

Epistemology has certain uses, but they are limited. Analyzing the source of our knowledge too deeply tends almost inevitably to lead to the conclusion of Socrates- that the greatest possible knowledge is to admit we know nothing. There is no way to logically prove the existence of right and wrong, or to show that God exists. Technically there is no way to show that any objects exist at all outside of our own minds, since the mind can create convincing images of its own. But such circular questioning leads nowhere. In practice, the vast majority of people fall into one of three camps. There are those who reject anything for which there is no objective proof, either setting it aside as not worth considering or actually deriding it as superstitious ignorance. Such people are not liable to be attached to beliefs which are factually nonsensical, but they live an impoverished internal life, cut off from the wellspring of the mythopoetic. The second camp views particular myths as literal facts, aggressively rejecting all other myths as lies and heresies. Not only is this group likely to believe things which are factually untrue, they are also likely to be dangerously intolerant of those who disagree with them, and to view any attempt to prevent them from doing damage as persecution. The third group accepts that science is competent within its proper sphere, but denies it the omnipotence its more extreme devotees claim. They accept myths as myths, not literal facts- but they still feel an appropriate sense of supernatural awe, a sense of the numinous that goes far beyond simply consigning myth to the subconscious. This view is the most flexible of the three, and perhaps the most common- though most people who hold it do so unconsciously, with half an apology toward either side and a degree of embarrassment.

Such embarrassment is unnecessary. The mythopoetic view is the balance of forces between the extreme positions of the materialist and the fundamentalist, and it retains the advantages of both. Reason is a useful tool, but like all tools it has its limits. Centuries of epistemological debate have shown us that there are certain questions reason can’t answer, questions it can’t even begin to address. In the past few centuries of philosophical discussion, reason looked itself in the mirror and threw its hands up in despair. It has been claimed that it is nonsensical to attempt to use reason to show the limitations of reason, but this is not the case. If you were going into a foreign country you might hire a guide, but if the guide reached a vast wilderness of which he had no knowledge, no doubt he would tell you so. "I can take you this far," says reason, "But no further. This is a country I’m not familiar with." So let us take the lesson and leave reason in its place- as the appropriate tool for certain problems, but not for others.

The truth is that I’m not even interested in the question of whether the divine "really" exists or not. To even say that you believe in God or that you don’t believe in God has always struck me as naive. Such answers don’t mean very much in my opinion. If the ultimate reality is completely beyond all comprehension, then it doesn’t exist in the way that a table exists in the first place. If you have had no experience of such a thing, then it will not mean anything to you, and I don’t ask you to accept my experience as your reality.

However, if you have seen something in this life that seems utterly transcendent, while at the same time immanent in every particle of the universe and heart-breakingly beautiful, so awe-inspiring that there are no adequate words for it in any language- well then, you may refer to it as God (as I do) or you may not. But I suspect that even if you don’t, you’ll understand why I do.

Bearing in mind, then, that we can call this Mystery anything, and that any word we could invent would be insufficient, I ask the reader to accept my use of the word God provisionally, substituting for it whatever he sees fit. It doesn’t matter even a little bit to me if you prefer to think of "the gods," or "the Goddess," "the Tao," "the Force," or whatever other man-made approximation seems best to you. These words all mean very different things, but they all touch on the infinite, and it’s the infinite I’m talking about, not an old bearded man sitting in the clouds.

It must be understood that any divine service tends towards God. Regardless of whether or not a person accepts God in an intellectual sense or is aware of having a relationship with God, if they are in a path of service to something holy then they are on a path of God. Thus, a polytheist who serves his gods with devotion, an atheist who devotes his life to mathematics or music, a devout Catholic or Moslem in prayer, an agnostic creating poetry or a Buddhist seeking to liberate others are all on paths of God. This is not because the use of the word God is a correct understanding and the other paths are confused. When speaking of God in words there can be no correct understanding, and the perspectives of seeing God as Many, One, doubtful or even non-existent are all equally valid and equally invalid, because the Absolute utterly transcends all of these perspectives. Nothing but God exists in the entire universe, and therefore any path of service to something holy can be spoken of as a path of God.

Another way of looking at this is to understand the nature of love. I tend to spend a lot of my time either writing or training or visiting people I care about; there is never a lot of time in my schedule when I have to figure out something to do with myself. I decided a few years ago that if I did have any extra time like that, I wouldn’t do anything to make it pass more quickly. If there was nothing specific that I needed or wanted to do, I would just sit there and do nothing. I found this quiet sitting to be very useful to me, and over time I became rather accustomed to it. I once spent twelve hours on an overnight camping trip, just sitting on a small island looking out at the night. But, the world being what it is, I got caught up in my various projects- and without even noticing it I stopped ever taking the time to sit.

One day recently, I arrived at my training studio early. I was going to give a lesson in historical fencing, but my students hadn’t arrived yet. Remembering my old rule, I just sat down to wait for them, and was struck suddenly by how long it had been since I had done that. The quiet and the lack of need to do anything caused me to notice my surroundings intensely. One of the artists I shared the studio with had left a little model boat on the table in front of me. I didn’t know who had made the boat, but I was fascinated by the detail they put into it. The sails looked like real canvas, and every knot was in its proper place. There was a tiny lobster pot made of balsa wood on the deck.

Whoever had made this boat had spared no effort to make it look real, to evoke the image of an actual fishing boat. I couldn’t imagine what practical reason there could be for doing this. The artist did it because it delighted him, because it made him happy to do it thoroughly. The only word I could think of for this was Love.

People sometimes ask me why I do the things I do, many of which have no practical application. There are many answers to this, but most of them describe the side effects. The real reason I do what I do is because it delights me, because it makes me feel alive and awake, because I love it. God is there.

When two or more musicians are playing, an extra note sometimes appears, a barely audible sound created by the harmony of the different instruments but greater than the sum of its parts. God is not a person; God is the world’s extra note. But the awe of even the slightest contact with this transcendent harmony is so overpowering that it feels almost exactly like being in love, so poets have often referred to God as a lover.

All this apocalyptic imagery might be a little disconcerting to the average reader, but the experience of the divine is like a hungry flame, burning away everything we thought we knew about the world and leaving only the sensation of awe. The feeling one is left with is that absolutely everything has been destroyed, and that sensation is liberating. A prisoner walking through the gates into the world beyond, free after decades behind bars, and laughing with joy. It is as if you could see again after a lifetime of blindness.

And yet it is not possible to avoid or escape the world and its suffering, especially not by retreating into awestruck bliss. The sheer beauty and magic of the world is intimidating, and rather than live in the painful sharpness of a constant ecstasy, most people retreat into dull apathy without ever being aware they made a choice.

Given the choice of embracing the universe and its magic in fear and trembling, or retreating into a dull and endless round of hollow distractions, most of us fall back on the distractions and pay the price for it.

We turn our backs on the wonder and glory that is our birthright, accepting a counterfeit coin in its place- the lie that we need to surround ourselves with material objects, hedging our bets with petty luxuries against the fear of the void. And yet there is scarcely any life that hasn’t been touched by magic at least once, leaving behind the lingering and guilty suspicion that we are settling for a sham.

Even the attempt to honor the power of God is painful, leading to a sense of interior solitude that could not be more potent if you walked alone through a desert, a darkness like drowning in the depths of the ocean.

And yet this darkness itself is fruitful, because God is unknowable. We take all the things of the world and reduce them to categories, but the infinite is beyond all categories. We can know nothing about It. We approach It, therefore, in a state of ignorance, in a state of unknowing ("agnosia"). We approach it in darkness and silence.

A mystic who called himself Dionysius the Areopagite described this insight many centuries ago, along with a specific method for approaching God in the Divine Darkness, a meditation he called the Via Negativa or Negative Way. In this meditation, we approach God through systematically denying any specific knowledge about Him:

"Leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect, and all things sensible and intellectual, and all things in the world of being and nonbeing, that you may arise by unknowing towards the union, as far as is attainable, with it that transcends all being and all knowledge. For by the unceasing and absolute renunciation of yourself and of all things you may be borne on high, through pure and entire self-abnegation, into the superessential Radiance of the Divine Darkness..." (Pseudo-Dionysius)

Between the ecstatic comprehension of gnosis and the "divine darkness" of agnosia, there is also a balance of forces that may be attained. Just as it is possible to become both a mystic and a stoic, manifesting one on the outside while cultivating the other internally, so both gnosis and agnosia may be honored at the same time. When drunk with the light of divine inspiration, you can remind yourself that you know nothing, that the source of this radiant wonder is an utter mystery. And when immersed in the obscurity of that deepest mystery, you can still allow yourself to surrender to joy, the kind of irrational joy that makes every action an expression of love.

Between somewhere and nowhere is a level of freedom beyond all others, a freedom that laughs with honest delight at this world where we suffer. May we all have the good fortune to taste it.